Information and interactive services available to mobile vehicles are increasing due to the demand of mobile vehicle operators for services such as navigation assistance, directory assistance, vehicle maintenance assistance, roadside assistance, information services assistance and emergency assistance. Requests for many of these services occur when a vehicle is outside of a home region, for example, during personal travel or business trips to neighboring or distant cities. In addition, the number of vehicles outfitted with suitable equipment to request and receive service information is growing. Projections are that by 2006 a majority of new American cars will be installed with some type of telematics unit to provide wireless communication and location-based services. These services are accessible through interfaces such as voice-recognition computer applications, touch-screen computer displays, computer keyboards, or a series of buttons on the dashboard or console of a vehicle.
Currently, telematics service call centers, in-vehicle compact disk (CD) or digital video display (DVD) media, web portals, and voice-enabled phone portals provide various types of location services, including driving directions, stolen vehicle tracking, traffic information, weather reports, restaurant guides, ski reports, road condition information, accident updates, street routing, landmark guides, and business finders.
For example, traffic and driving directions are accessible through a voice portal that uses incoming number identification to generate location information based on the area code or prefix of the phone number, or to access location information stored in a user's profile associated with the phone number. In some cases users are prompted to enter more details through a voice interface. Other examples are web and wireless portals that offer location-based services such as maps and driving directions where the user enters both start and end addresses. Some of these services will have a voice interface.
This system applies to vehicles, which leave a factory with a telematics system described above already installed. Once the vehicle is sold by a dealership the customer is enrolled in the telematics system database and the system is activated. There are several opportunities for initiation of the telematics system to occur. In one scenario, initiation of a telematics service occurs upon purchase of the vehicle prior to leaving the dealership. Then the dealer calls a telematics call center using the telematics system to provide data on the subscriber to a real communication service advisor at the telematics call center. The dealer must also provide details on the telematics services desired by the subscriber to the communication service advisor in a time consuming interaction.
In a second scenario, initiation of a telematics service occurs after the vehicle leaves the dealership. Then the customer calls a telematics call center using the telematics system to provide data on the subscriber to a real communication service advisor at the telematics call center. The customer must also tell the communication service advisor which telematics services they want in their subscription package during a time consuming interaction with the communication service advisor.
It is desirable, therefore, to provide a system and method to reduce the time required to enroll a new subscriber in a telematic system that overcomes these and other disadvantages.